In a 2012 article in Bloomberg, author Michael Burgan asserted that there is a "grand tradition of private wealth furthering advances in rocketry and space exploration" dating back to the early rocketry experiments of Robert Goddard.[6]

Despite those earlier private undertakings, during the principal period of spaceflight in the mid-twentieth century, only nation states developed and flew spacecraft above the Kármán line, the nominal boundary of space. Spaceflight was thus the monopoly province of a small group of national governments.

Both the U.S. civilian space program and Soviet space program were operated using mainly military pilots as astronauts. During this period, no commercial space launches were available to private operators, and no private organization was able to offer space launches. Eventually, private organizations were able to both offer and purchase space launches, thus beginning the period of private spaceflight.

History of full private space transportation includes early efforts by GermanyOTRAG company in the 20th century and numerous modern projects of orbital and suborbital launch systems in the 21st century. Last ones counts the manned programs also - most famous and important of them are suborbital flights of Virgin Galactic and orbital flights of SpaceX and other COTS participants.

Development of alternatives to government-provided space launch services began in earnest in the 2000s. Private interests began funding limited development programs, but the US government later sponsored a series ofprograms to incentivize and encourage private companies to begin offering both cargo, and later, crew space transportation services.

Wired magazine went so far as to say that 2012 was "the year of private space,"[7] recounting the success of SpaceX in conducting two launches to the International Space Station, with progress toward emerging competition in that industry sector, while also highlighting the well-funded capital and experienced engineering teams behind the startup companies Planetary Resources–asteroid mining–and Golden Spike–private human Lunar surface excursions.[7]

In June 2013, British newspaper The Independent' claimed that "the space race is flaring back into life, and it's not massive institutions such as Nasa that are in the running. The old view that human space flight is so complex, difficult and expensive that only huge government agencies could hope to accomplish it is being disproved by a new breed of flamboyant space privateers, who are planning to send humans out beyond the Earth's orbit for the first time since 1972,"[8] particularly noting projects underway by Mars One, Inspiration Mars Foundation, Bigelow Aerospace and SpaceX.[8]

On March 26, 1980, the European Space Agency created Arianespace, a company to be operated commercially after initial hardware and launch facilities were developed with government funding.[9] Arianespace produces, operates and markets the Ariane launcher family. By 1995 Arianespace lofted its 100th satellite and by 1997 the Ariane rocket had its 100th launch.[10] Arianespace's 23 shareholders represent scientific, technical, financial and political entities from 10 different European countries.[11]

(c) Commercial Use of Space.--Congress declares that the general welfare of the United States requires that the Administration seek and encourage, to the maximum extent possible, the fullest commercial use of space.

Yet one of NASA's early actions was to effectively ban private space flight through a mountain of red tape. From the beginning, though, this met significant opposition not only by the private sector, but in Congress. In 1962, Congress passed its first law pushing back the prohibition on private involvement in space, the Communications Satellite Act of 1962. While largely focusing on the satellites of its namesake, this was described by both the law's opponents and advocates of private space, as the first step on the road to privatization.

While launch vehicles were originally bought from private contractors, from the beginning of the Shuttle program until the Challenger disaster in 1986, NASA attempted to position its shuttle as the sole legal space launch option.[12] But with the crash came the suspension of shuttle flights, allowing the formation of a commercial launch industry.[13]

On November 5, 1990, United States President George H. W. Bush signed into law the Launch Services Purchase Act.[15] The Act, in a complete reversal of the earlier Space Shuttle monopoly, ordered NASA to purchase launch services for its primary payloads from commercial providers whenever such services are required in the course of its activities.

In 1992, Resurs-500 capsule containing gifts was launched from Plesetsk Cosmodrome in what was a private spaceflight called Europe-America 500. The flight was conceived by the Russian Foundation for Social Inventions and TsSKB-Progress, a Russian rocket-building company, to increase trade between Russia and USA, and promote use of technology once reserved only for military forces. Money for the launch was raised from a collection of Russian companies. The capsule parachuted into the Pacific Ocean and was brought to Seattle by a Russian missile-tracking ship.

The Russian government sold part of its stake in RSC Energia to private investors in 1994. Energia together with Khrunichev constituted most of the Russian manned space program. In 1997, the Russian government sold off enough of its share to lose the majority position.[citation needed][dated info]

In 1996 the United States government selected Lockheed Martin and Boeing to each develop Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicles (EELV) to compete for launch contracts and provide assured access to space. The government's acquisition strategy relied on the strong commercial viability of both vehicles to lower unit costs. This anticipated market demand did not materialize, but both the Delta IV and Atlas V EELVs remain in active service.

Since the late 1990s, various private initiatives have started up to pursue the private use of space. In the early 2000s, several public-private partnerships have been established in the United States to take advantage of entrepreneurialcompanies to accelerate spaceflight technology development and reduce the cost of access to space, both for cargo and passenger transport. In addition, several purely private initiatives have begun in the 2010s to develop reusable spaceflight technology as well as to begin various private spaceflight endeavors to the inner solar system.[22]

In June 2012, private Dutch non-profit Mars One announced a private one-way (no return) human mission to Mars with the aim to establish a permanent human colony on Mars.[24] The plan is to send a communication satellite and path finder lander to the planet by 2016 and, after several stages, land four humans on the Martian surface for permanent settlement in 2023.[25] A new set of four astronauts would then arrive every two years.[26]

In December 2012, a private US company, Golden Spike, announced plans for commercial human spaceflight missions to the Moon by no earlier than 2020. Their plan projects development budget of between $7 and $8 billion, followed by around $1.5 billion per each "two-human lunar surface mission".[27]

In February 2013, the US nonprofit Inspiration Mars Foundation announced a plan to send a married couple on a 2018 mission to travel to Mars and back to Earth on a 501-day round trip, with no landing planned on Mars.[28] The mission will take advantage of an infrequently occurring free return trajectory—a unique orbit opportunity which occurs only once every fifteen years—and will allow the space capsule to use the smallest possible amount of fuel to get it to Mars and back to Earth. The two-person American crew – a man and a woman – will orbit around Mars at a distance of 100 miles (160 km) of the surface.[29] "If anything goes wrong, the spacecraft should make its own way back to Earth — but with no possibility of any short-cuts home."[30]

Today many commercial space transportation companies offer launch services to satellite companies and government space organizations around the world. In 2005 there were 18 total commercial launches and 37 non-commercial launches. Russia flew 44% of commercial orbital launches, while Europe had 28% and the United States had 6%.[31]

It is not yet clear to what extent these entrepreneurs see "legitimate business opportunity, [for example,] space tourism and other commercial activities in space, or [are] wealthy men seeking the exclusivity that space offers innovators and investors."[32] These investments are a "gamble", and may, or may not pay off.[32]

The space transport business serves primarily national government and large commercial customer segments. Launches of government payloads, including military, civilian and scientific satellites, is the largest market segment at nearly $100 billion a year. This segment is dominated by domestic favorites such as the United Launch Alliance for U.S. government payloads and Arianespace for European satellites. The commercial payload segment, valued at under $3 billion a year, is dominated by Arianespace, with over 50% of the market segment,[33] followed by Russian launchers. See a complete list of launch systems.

The US government determined to begin a process to purchase orbital launch services for cargo deliveries to the International Space Station (ISS) beginning in the mid-2000s, rather than operate the launch and delivery services as they had with the Space Shuttle, which was to retire in less than half a decade, and ultimately did retire in 2011. On January 18, 2006, NASA announced an opportunity for US commercial providers to demonstrate orbital transportation services.[34] As of 2008, NASA planned to spend $500 million through 2010 to finance development of private sector capability to transport payloads to the International Space Station (ISS).[dated info] This was considered more challenging than then-available commercial space transportation because it would require precision orbit insertion, rendezvous and possibly docking with another spacecraft. The commercial vendors competed in specific service areas.[35]

After it transpired that Rocketplane Kistler was failing to meet its contractual deadlines, NASA terminated their contract in August 2008, after only $32m had been spent. Several months later, in December 2008, NASA announced that they have awarded the remaining $170m to the Orbital Sciences Corporation to develop resupply services to the ISS.[38]

Shackleton Energy Company[43] intends to undertake human tended lunar prospecting for water ice. If significant reserves of ice are located, they plan to establish a network of "refueling service stations" in low Earth orbit and on the moon to process and provide fuel and consumables for commercial and government customers. If the prospecting is successful—ice deposits are located, the appropriate legal regime is in place to support commercial development, and the ice can be extracted — Shackleton proposes to establish a fuel-processing operation on the lunar surface and in propellant depots in Low Earth Orbit. Equipment would melt the ice and purify the water, "electrolyze the water into gaseous hydrogen and oxygen, and then condense the gases into liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen and also process them into hydrogen peroxide, all of which could be used as rocket fuels.

All private individuals who flew to space before Dennis Tito's self-financed International Space Station visit in 2001 had been sponsored by their home governments. Those trips include US Congressman Bill Nelson's January 1986 flight on the Space Shuttle Columbia and Japanese television reporter Toyohiro Akiyama's 1990 flight to the Mir Space Station.

The Ansari X PRIZE was intended to stimulate private investment in the development of spaceflight technologies. The June 21, 2004, test flight of SpaceShipOne, a contender for the X PRIZE, was the first human spaceflight in a privately developed and operated vehicle.

On September 27, 2004, following the success of SpaceShipOne, Richard Branson, owner of Virgin and Burt Rutan, SpaceShipOne's designer, announced that Virgin Galactic had licensed the craft's technology, and were planning commercial space flights in 2.5 to 3 years. A fleet of five craft (SpaceShipTwo, launched from the WhiteKnightTwo carrier airplane) were to be constructed, and flights would be offered at around $200,000 each, although Branson said he planned to use this money to make flights more affordable in the long term. A test flight of SpaceShipTwo crashed in October 2014.[45]

In December 2004, United States President George W. Bush signed into law the Commercial Space Launch Amendments Act.[49] The Act resolved the regulatory ambiguity surrounding private spaceflights and is designed to promote the development of the emerging U.S. commercial human space flight industry.

On July 12, 2006, Bigelow Aerospace launched the Genesis I, a subscale pathfinder of an orbital space station module. Genesis II was launched on June 28, 2007, and there are plans for additional prototypes to be launched in preparation for the production model BA 330 spacecraft.[dated info]

On September 28, 2006, Jim Benson, SpaceDev founder, announced he was founding Benson Space Company with the intention of being first to market with the safest and lowest cost suborbital personal spaceflight launches, using the vertical takeoff and horizontal landing Dream Chaser vehicle based on the NASA HL-20 Personnel Launch System vehicle.[dated info]

In December 2012, the Golden Spike Company announced plans to privately transport space exploration participants to the surface of the Moon and return, beginning as early as 2020, for US$750 million per passenger.[50]

The Planetary Society, a nonprofit space research and advocacy organization, has sponsored a series of small satellites to test the feasibility of solar sailing. Their first such project, Cosmos 1, was launched in 2005 but failed to reach space, and was succeeded by the Lightsail program. The first Lightsail spacecraft is scheduled to launch in May 2015, followed by a more complex mission in 2016.[53]

SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket, first launched in 2010 with no passengers,[54] was designed to be subsequently human-rated. The Atlas V launch vehicle is also a contender for human-rating.

Plans and a full-scale prototype for the SpaceX Dragon, a capsule capable of carrying up to 7 passengers, were announced in March 2006,[55] and Dragon version 2 flight hardware was unveiled in May 2014.[56] As of September 2014[update], both SpaceX and Boeing have received contracts from NASA to complete building, testing, and flying up to six flights of human-rated space capsules to the International Space Station beginning in 2017.[57]

In December 2010, SpaceX launched the second Falcon 9 and the first operational Dragon spacecraft. The mission was deemed fully successful, marking the first launch to space, atmospheric reentry and recovery of a rocket by a private company. Subsequent COTS missions includee increasingly complex orbital tasks, culminating in Dragon first docking to the ISS in 2012.

An early flight of the Falcon 9 is planned to carry Sundancer, the prototype expandable and habitable space module (based on the former NASA TransHab design) constructed by Bigelow Aerospace. Bigelow Aerospace expects modules like Sundancer and the larger BA 330 to be used for activities like microgravity research, space manufacturing, and space tourism (with modules serving as orbital hotels). To promote private manned launch efforts, Bigelow offered the US$50 million America's Space Prize for the first US-based privately funded team to launch a manned reusable spacecraft to orbit on or before January 10, 2010, though no company was able to meet this deadline.

As of 2012, there is commercial/private access to the U.S. National Laboratory space on the International Space Station (ISS) through the private company NanoRacks. Science experiments can be conducted on a variety of standard rack-sized experimental platforms with standard interfaces for power and data acquisition.[62]

In a presentation given November 15, 2005, to the 52nd Annual Conference of the American Astronautical Society, NASA Administrator Michael D. Griffin suggested that establishing an on-orbit propellant depot is, "Exactly the type of enterprise which should be left to industry and to the marketplace."[63] At the Space Technology and Applications International Forum in 2007, Dallas Bienhoff of Boeing made a presentation detailing the benefits of propellant depots.[64]Shackleton Energy Company has established operational plans, an extensive teaming and industrial consortium for developing LEO Propellant Depots supplied by Lunar polar sourced water ice.[65]

Some have speculated on the profitability of miningmetal from asteroids. According to some estimates, a one kilometer-diameter asteroid would contain 30 million tons of nickel, 1.5 million tons of metal cobalt and 7,500 tons of platinum; the platinum alone would have a value of more than $150 billion at 2008 terrestrial prices.[66]

A space elevator system is a possible launch system, currently under investigation by at least one private venture.[67] There are concerns over cost, general feasibility and some political issues. On the plus side the potential to scale the system to accommodate traffic would (in theory) be greater than some other alternatives. Some factions contend that a space elevator — if successful — would not supplant existing launch solutions but complement them.

After earlier first effort of OTRAG, in the 1990s the projection of a significant demand for communications satellite launches attracted the development of a number of commercial space launch providers. The launch demand largely vanished when some of the largest satellite constellations, such as 288 satellite Teledesic network, were never built. The historic tendency of NASA to compete against the private sector and the Department of Defense's preference for the traditional military industrial complex has discouraged many new space launch ventures.[citation needed]

In 1996 NASA selected Lockheed MartinSkunk Works to build the X-33 VentureStar prototype for a single stage to orbit (SSTO) reusable launch vehicle. In 1999, the subscale X-33 prototype's composite liquid hydrogen fuel tank failed during testing. At project termination on March 31, 2001, NASA had funded $912 million of this wedge shaped spacecraft while Lockheed Martin financed $357 million of it.[68] The VentureStar was to have been a full-scale commercial space transport operated by Lockheed Martin.

In 1997 Beal Aerospace proposed the BA-2, a low-cost heavy-lift commercial launch vehicle. On March 4, 2000, the BA-2 project tested the largest liquid rocket engine built since the Saturn V.[69] In October 2000, Beal Aerospace ceased operations citing a decision by NASA and the Department of Defense to commit themselves to the development of the competing government-financed EELV program.[70]

In 1998 Rotary Rocket proposed the Roton, a Single Stage to Orbit (SSTO) piloted Vertical Take-off and Landing (VTOL) space transport.[71] A full scale Roton Atmospheric Test Vehicle flew three times in 1999. After spending tens of millions of dollars in development the Roton failed to secure launch contracts and Rotary Rocket ceased operations in 2001.

^Szondy, David (2012-02-05). "SpaceX Dragon's ultimate mission is Mars colonization". Gizmag. Retrieved 2012-02-13. For decades after that first launch, space flight was a government monopoly. Even when private companies started going into space in the 1990s, it was only as providers of launch services to send commercial and government satellites into orbit. Now, all that is changing as private enterprise takes over space exploration in a manner not seen since the early days of the Hudson's Bay Company.

^Engel, Max (2013-03-01). "Launch Market on Cusp of Change". Satellite Today. Retrieved 2013-02-15. Although some governments funded vehicle development in different ways, there were no vehicles that were not the product of some form of fairly direct governmental support. Even Ariane, the most “commercial” of launch vehicles, was commercial in operation only, not in inception and development, and could easily call on government support when things went wrong.

^NASA and the Space Industry
"On the other hand, NASA resisted the buildup of a commercial launch industry. Launching was for many years an enterprise that was run by a de facto partnership of NASA and the companies from which NASA bought launchers and launch services. NASA proposed to put an end to that enterprise in the 1980s; it sought to enthrone the shuddle as the nation's commercial, as well as government, launcher. The prospect of erecting a private sector launch industry alongside the NASA shuttle was discussed, but it did not become a reality because the shuttle was too tough a competitor for private vehicles. Only the grounding of the shuttle after the Challenger accident allowed the commercial launch industry to get started.

^It's illegal for private enterprise to go into space.
U.S. law regulates private space launches, and the current law is quite unreasonable. A private company wanting to build and launch a rocket faces a mountain of red tape and very long lead times for getting approval from the government. However, although these problems add a tremendous amount of cost to private space launches, there are no laws that prohibit private space launches.

^Private Spaceflight Bill Signed into Law
The Commercial Space Launch Amendments Act, or H.R. 5382, puts a clear legislative stamp on regulations already being formulated by the Federal Aviation Administration. More significantly, the law would eventually let paying passengers fly on suborbital launch vehicles at their own risk.

^Wow. FAA Paperwork Delays May Block Virgin Galactic Debut.
Apparently the problem is that the FAA hasn't given Virgin Atlantic a commercial operator's licence (at least in part because no one has set the rules for what counts as safe spaceflight). Without a commercial operator's licence, it's illegal for anyone - including Virgin's billionaire owner Richard Branson - to be a passenger on space planes. Think about this for a second: the private sector will have created a plane that glides through space, just over a century after heavier than air flight was even invented, but the scolds at the FAA need extra time to fill out their paperwork. Until then, apparently, the future can't happen.

^"SpaceX Lands Contract To Fly To Moon". Aviation Week. 2011-02-08. Retrieved 2011-02-08. Pittsburgh-based Astrobotic Technology, a Carnegie Mellon University spin-off company, has signed a launch services contract with Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) for a Falcon 9 rocket to deliver a lander, small rover and up to about 240 lb. of payload to the surface of the Moon

^"MoonEx aims to scour moon for rare materials". Los Angeles Times. 2011-04-08. Retrieved 2011-08-20. The company is among several teams hoping to someday win the Google Lunar X Prize competition, a $30-million race to the moon in which a privately-funded team must successfully place a robot on the moon's surface and have it explore at least 1/3 of a mile. It also must transmit high definition video and images back to Earth before 2016. ... should be ready to land on the lunar surface by 2013